People have been telling me that for 18 years and (a) we've hired our fair share of candidates with gold-plated resumes (and stopped hiring candidates that only had gold-plated resumes, acquired from failing up) and (b) the nontraditional background candidates we've hired have generally been our top performers.

Hiring in most of the tech industry is gatekept, and like every protectionist scheme, it isn't organized for productivity.